Johnny Depp's 'Transcendence' Is A No-Fault Box Office Bomb

Scott Mendelson
, ContributorI cover the film industry.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Transcendence opened last weekend and is pretty much the very definition of a bomb. The $100 million production opened with just $11 million. With poor reviews, no buzz, and the summer season just around the corner, it's sure to sink fast and needs an overseas miracle to have any hope of recouping its respective expenses. Usually when a big film fails this badly, fingers are pointed and blame is assigned. But in the broad scheme of things, it can be argued that, aside from making a bad film (which cannot be predicted from the outset), no one involved with the production and marketing of Transcendence did anything wrong.

With its top-billed star as the only "opener" in the cast (Morgan Freeman is an asset, but he's not a face-on-the-poster star), the film was viewed as a test of sorts for Johnny Depp's "all-by-myself" star power. As it turns out, Depp's pull wasn't enough to get people to see Transcendence. Over the last eleven years, he's had a flurry of big hits, but nearly all of those big hits (Alice In Wonderland, the Pirates sequels, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, etc.) were prepackaged properties that didn't depend on Depp alone to make the sale. Even Public Enemies, his biggest domestic hit that didn't involve make-up or wigs in a Tim Burton/Gore Verbinski universe, was a Michael Mann gangster film that co-starred Christian Bale coming off The Dark Knight.

Transcendence was exactly the kind of film pundits claim that Depp should be making (playing a normal human being who uses his normal voice in a non-Tim Burton/Gore Verbinski film set squarely on planet Earth in the present day), yet it registers as among his lowest openings of the post-Pirates period. He makes Pirates 4 and critics scream that he's a sell-out. He makes The Rum Diary and no one shows up. Could it be that Johnny Depp was never much of a movie star, but rather the most valuable of added-value elements when allowed to go zany in a prepackaged would-be blockbuster? Transcendence had little to offer beyond Johnny Depp playing a normal guy who gets turned into a computer. If you're someone who enjoys his larger-than-life weirdness, you're not going to be thrilled with monotone-Johnny. The hook was literally "come see Depp as the opposite of why you like him".

The rest of the cast, Rebecca Hall, Paul Bettany, Morgan Freeman, Cillian Murphy, and the like are not responsible, as they aren't movie stars in that "make me see a movie I otherwise wouldn't see" kind of way. And what of those who funded and distributed the film? Well, Alcon Entertainment co-financed Transcendence with China's DMG Entertainment, and the film opened in China this weekend as well (its earned $28 million worldwide). Warner Bros. (a division of
Time Warner) distributed the film domestically while Summit International actually covered much of the budget by selling overseas distribution to independent distributors. So if much of the budget is actually covered before theatrical via "pre-sales", then the loss is spread out over various entities, minimizing the risk for any one party. Warner Bros. gets a black eye, but they'll be fine.

More importantly, should we be penalizing Warner Bros., Alcon, and DMG for spending $100 million (plus marketing) on an original science-fiction thriller with adult movie stars? Isn't that what we say we want when we whine about reboots, sequels, and remakes? It stood to reason that Wally Pfister, the cinematographer who helped make Chris Nolan's last several films look so gorgeous, would make an okay director. And yes the screenplay was from a first-timer, Jack Paglen, but (for example) Brian Helgeland wrote nothing but horror until 1997, when he wrote L.A. Confidential and The Postman in the same year. Transcendence had Johnny Depp in a somewhat against-type performance, surrounded by the likes of Rebecca Hall and Morgan Freeman, directed by the guy who shot Inception, and funded outside of the studio with a foreign distribution deal that covered most of the $100 million production budget before opening weekend.

It looked like the kind of project only a fool would say "no" to. But the finished project didn't deliver, both artistically and in terms of marketable elements. With few real visual "money shots" and a "fear technology" plot that felt perhaps more generic and out-of-date than expected, the marketing department had little with which to hook the audience. Warner Bros. knew they had a critical loser on their hands, holding review embargoes until the morning of the All-Media screening and bracing themselves for the deluge of pans they knew were coming. With no buzz to be found, a lackluster trailer that sold the somewhat formulaic nature of the film while giving away most of the plot in broad strokes, and terrible reviews being held until the last minute, Warner Bros. could do little more than hold their breath and wait for the shellacking.

There is plenty that you can point to and say "That's what went wrong!" The film was an artistic botch, it was a little pricier than it needed to be, and Johnny Depp against-type isn't as much of a draw as him playing to form. And the notion of it being a mini-blockbuster prior to the summer season (think The Time Machine in 2002) was sabotaged by the strength of
Walt Disney'sCaptain America: The Winter Soldier. But when viewed from the initial "green light" stage, Transcendence is what you hope would get made and/or distributed by a major studio. It's an original science-fiction morality thriller with "big ideas". It stars Johnny Depp as the kind of "regular guy" type character that we all claim he never plays anymore, with ample support from a murderer's row of character actors. It's directed by a guy one degree removed from Chris Nolan and looks good enough to actually deserve the IMAX treatment. It's made by and intended for adult moviegoers, operating as a B-level blockbuster just before the summer rush.

The defining variable, one that arguably affected everything else down the line, and the one thing they couldn't predict from the outset, that all of these people would combine to make a genuinely bad film. But Transcendence doesn't negate the success of original genre films like Gravity and Inception, and we should still offer kudos to Warner Bros. for distributing such material in an era when the major studios are actually getting attacked for not having enough franchises. Audiences stayed home or went elsewhere not because they don't want original material, but because the material being sold to them didn't look enticing and the reviews confirmed their suspicions. Transcendence was a bad film that couldn't transcend its viewer-unfriendly elements with would-be star power. Other than "Johnny Depp without his shtick isn't a movie star", there are few "good" lessons to be learned from Transcendence.

Warner Bros. and Johnny Depp missed on Transcendence, both artistically and commercially.But they were right to try, as it's exactly the kind of film we all claim the studios should be making. I would argue that with the factors in play, it qualifies as a no-fault box office flop.